Don’t just see the provision – see the provider (Gita Daily)

Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 09, Text 10, By Chaitanya Charan Das (http://www.thespiritualscientist.com)
Article – As eco-awareness is increasing, more people are appreciating how dependent we all are on nature. Without nature’s provision of our basic necessities, we wouldn’t be able to live.

Yet this desirable eco-awareness can morph into an obsessive fixation with nature that manifest philosophically as naturalism. By seeing nature as the be-all and the end-all, naturalism exiles God and replaces him with nature. Naturalism comprises a dead-end in our spiritual evolution.

While all living beings depend on nature, we humans have the intelligence to appreciate its complexity and intricacy – an appreciation that can be enhanced through scientific study when done open-mindedly. But we also have a higher intelligence to perceive something more – the divine hand behind nature. The Bhagavad-gita (09.10) reminds us that nature works under Krishna’s supervision.

An infant eats whatever food is provided without thinking where it comes from, but a child notes that putting some coins in a machine provides readymade food such as sandwiches. And an adult understands that behind the machine is the intelligence of the maker, who has set up the system by which food is provided.

Similarly, the subhuman living beings simply live on nature, without consciously contemplating the source of things. Whatever eco-friendly behavior they exhibit is simply due to biological instinct, not conscious cogitation. We humans when we rise slightly above the force of biological drives learn to contemplate the complex natural mechanisms that make our existence possible. When our consciousness evolves further, we perceive that beyond these complex mechanisms is a super-intelligent transcendent maker.

The capacity to perceive spiritual reality, especially the supreme spiritual reality, is humanity’s defining privilege. When we value nature’s provision not as a lucky accident of unguided natural processes, but as the benevolence of the supervisor of nature, our spiritual evolution races towards its zenith.